No road to compromise

Squamish Estuary road option rankles conservationists

The pursuit of balance is tricky business, and there’s seldom a
harder line to walk than the one strung between development and conservation.
To build or to preserve — that’s the real question.

Catherine Jackson has an answer. As president of the Squamish
Environmental Conservation Society (SECS), Jackson is flatly opposed to a
District of Squamish transportation plan that considers building a road through
the Estuary, an ecologically sensitive habitat located at the southwest end of
town. Currently, the area and its environs accommodate railway and marine
terminal infrastructure, at the same time providing a home to birds and other
wildlife.

“There’s a lot of people that realize the value of the Estuary
and what will be compromised,” she said. “It’s horribly significant, and it
will have a huge impact to have a road going through, as well as a rail line.”

For district staff, however, that position is balance-bereft.
The town is growing, and downtown density is expected to increase. A road
through the Estuary offers an alternative to both regular traffic and shipping
trucks. Further, it provides links to the town’s business park and terminal.
The transportation plan outlines other choices, but staff seems most interested
in the so-called 7
th
Avenue Connector option.

“Our expectation is that corridor is needed,” says Mick
Gottardi, Squamish’s director of community development. “If they’re not going
to have that access, what they’re going to do is use Loggers Lane, and that’ll
cause two things. One, development will be occurring around Loggers Lane, and
so there’ll be more activity, more pedestrian activity, and that will create
conflict.”

The second hitch relates to Loggers Lane itself. The street,
which is south of and runs parallel to Cleveland Avenue, is too small to
accommodate large volumes of truck traffic. To boot, expansion opportunities
are lacking.

But Jackson prefers another of the plan’s options, which is to build
a bridge crossing Mamquam Blind Channel, thereby allowing truck traffic access
to the highway. While the district does intend to build such a bridge, the
issue of truck traffic in the downtown core still remains, says Gottardi.

Besides, he says, the district has an impact mitigation
strategy on the drawing board.

“I think the only thing that realistically we can do is try and
capture run-off from the road,” Gottardi said. “I think that’s the main
concern. There are noise issues and air quality issues, and there are issues of
grease and oil and hydrocarbons from vehicles.”

Gottardi says a ditch could be dug to collect harmful overflow.
From there, some kind of bio-filter system would take care of the rest.

No dice, says Jackson. Hydrocarbons are indeed an issue, but
even if their impact could be mitigated to nil, the noise and commotion created
by roadways is still a paramount concern.

“The impact from vehicular traffic going through can’t be
underestimated,” she said. “It would be huge.”

This section of the transportation plan will be rolled into the
Downtown Neighbourhood Plan, which, in turn, will be part of the Official
Community Plan. All proposals are at various stages of the approval process.